Last night I had to stay up late to finish Jasper Fforde's newest publication, "Shades of Grey". I couldn't put it down. And then it turned out to be one of those unfinished stories, but it was left so cleverly hanging in the balance that I was thrilled to get to the last page and find it so... it means MORE "Shades of Grey" to look forward to- Yay!
In his acknowledgments, Fforde explains his deviation from the themes of Literary detective, classics and Nursery rhymes we have come to know and love. "Shades of Grey" sounds like it was a labourious project and like the reading of it, you take a little while to warm up to this imaginatively rich parallel world, bound by the communistic regime of "Chromaticism", but once you catch on, it becomes all absorbing and wonderful. I hope the author found it so as he delved into it, (I suspect he probably did)and I thank him for his trouble : )
Fforde's protagonist, Eddie Russet, is a typically complex character; reluctant, fallible and the most bull-headed pedant to play the rebellious anti-hero I have read anywhere. His love-life is complicated and becomes more so throughout the book, largely due to the insertion of his accomplice in the violently disposed but attractive Jane. Jane, who is a Grey,(read Proletariat), and as the insider with all the know-how, chutzpah or 'plums,' inveigles Eddie (a Red, the lowest caste of the Chromatic community, one above Grey), who can't help but want to satisfy his curiosity in a strange town, where rules aren't adhered to and all previous values are challenged. The stakes are high; there are gruesome murders, apparitions, thefts of identity, forced marriages and hovering over all, creating a sense of foreboding, a malevolent atmosphere of totalitarianism.
Fforde uses humour in all his novels but his clever allusion to communistic regimes, for example, the periodic "Great Leap Backwards" and the empty library shock us into the reality of the cultural void such regimes create. His treatments of sex, marriage, and of human nature in general are always amusing and often accurate, but in this book, darkly so. His insertion of a contemporary well known "love-scene" movie excerpt as a piece of "ancient" archeology in a future context is laugh-out-loud hilarious, hilarious because we recognise it, and the silliness of the scene. He intersperses humour with the darker elements of the story successfully, keeping the narrative an adult read with belly laughs a plenty.
That Fforde has a message in his book is probably a reach too far, but there are many sharp insights and observances in "Shades of Grey". We can have a good laugh at ourselves when we read Fforde, as he lampoons humanity in all it's petty, politicised, sexist,racist glory in a context which allows us to observe from a safe distance, whilst at the same time having a rollicking great adventure.
